Empty Coffins
by Be3
Summary: There are at least 2 instances in Canon when the body could not be find to bury... and at least one when the coffin wouldn't be wasted on a drowned heathen. Chapter 4, warning: multiple X-overs, possibly crack.
1. Chapter 1

Summary: a few drabbles from Mrs. Stapleton's point of view.

Disclaimer: everything is Doyle's. Especially the quotes in # 8.

1.

She teaches English, French and German, and would like to add Latin to the list. He agrees to help her with studying it. He himself is a natural science genius, a captivating conversationalist, and overall a soul mate in this bog of a town. Would she be so kind as to proofread some of his notes? Publishing a butterfly species new to the fauna is always a challenge - some think everything is found and documented. Meanwhile, he spent years trying to identify several specimens he collected as a boy...

She listens to his hand-waving enthusiasm, and can't help admiring him.

2.

Rumours are ruin to a woman's life. She doesn't know who started it, but it doesn't matter - either she becomes Mrs. Vandeleur now, or she loses her job tomorrow. For the first time, she decides to act as a female and ask him (he doesn't deserve it). He stares at her, mouth agape, but when she turns to leave and probably drown herself, he recovers and says he would be honoured. The date is appointed; she stumbles upon the customary answer before the altar (the vicar is unsettled), and loses her job anyway - they move to Devonshire...

3.

He is preoccupied every time she risks disturbing him. Money. It is always money. From what she gathered, he obtained a sum large enough to buy a cottage (granted, the land is cheaper here). She refuses to think how he earned it. She doesn't have to work, and a vacation is nice, but when he informs her that they are no longer husband and wife, she is both offended an enraged. She calls him names in three languages, not being that fluent in Latin (yet), - and when he finally explains his felonious plans it is something of a relief.

4.

He got a dog. No, a Dog. A beast no sane man could ever hope to tame. He spends more time with it then he does with her, feeds it, grooms it, poisons it regularly with some luminescent solution; it's a new centre of his universe. She stays at home, entertains his guests (a certain Mrs. Lyons gets on her nerves every Thursday), reads some classics Dr. Mortimer brings now and then (Newton especially), receives flowers from Sir Baskerville, who by the look of his estate is more of a grower than an engineer. _And they lived happily ever after_.

5.

Sir Baskerville is a great gentleman; she can't quite believe Jack intends to kill him. Alas, Jack does. She contemplates warning the baron, but Jack can be persuasive - she is ashamed of the bruises under her sleeves. She is terrified; should she do away with the dog now? He laughs in her face and leads her to a little island in the mire, incriminating her every time he points at another spot to plant a guiding wand.

He'd tell her later he almost got eaten alive when recapturing the beast.

He drinks, she sobs, and neither sleeps that night.

6.

There is an heir.

Well, it would be more surprising if there weren't any. Still, Jack took that as a personal offence. He left for London (or wherever he left for, she can't be bothered to remember, it would make everything real) and entrusted her with caring for his pet.

She would poison it. Strangle it. Shoot it. Starve it. She would ditch the corpse into the mire - no, drag it to the police station to turn them all in. Well, maybe she'd spare Mrs. Lyons. It's family business.

She stares at the wailing, abandoned creature and sees herself.

7.

There is a convict on the moor.

She is terrified; Jack waves her concerns off. He is a man possessed. He isn't troubled by this new threat. He'd bring his revolver at all times, is all.

She swallows her fear. Tomorrow she'll go for a walk - she rarely leaves the house since the rumours of a wandering Hound must mean Jack doesn't control it as well as she'd be comfortable with - to avert the tragedy.

He told her he tried to scare Mr. Baskerville off, but she can't in whole honesty believe him.

_Though that would be nice._

8.

_Has he escaped_, she asks.

_He cannot escape us, madam_, says the fellow who turns out to be an Inspector.

She is fleetingly aggravated. Must criminals always come first? It doesn't matter, though; she is free. It's intoxicating.

And likely a widow already, so she doesn't smile. All things Stapleton are behind her, except, maybe, a testimony. Jack restrained her tonight, so maybe they will not seriously regard her as an apprentice to his schemes. If only he didn't... There's still some part of her that is ashamed of his conduct.

She will burn the whip once she is alone.

9.

There's something glorious in the cold air, like an old story with no happy end. A golden-haired woman on the grave's brink clasps her shawl distractedly. In the background, Mrs. Stapleton hears the solemn disquiet of other attendants, the unnecessary ones, and wonders why there isn't a second pit.

She picks up a handful of earth (it's slightly damp), straightens up, and the vicar fidgets uneasily - there is something devilish in her face.

_Just what is it with you and clergy, I never understood_, he'd said.

I do, she whispers, and hurls the mud at his empty coffin.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: really random. Unbetaed. Set after "The Final Problem". Watson in absentia.

Dear Sherlock,

If you are reading this, then you've indeed acquired supernatural powers, for I have no intentions of ever writing this down. I am most emphatically not going to complain to you when I have the first opportunity of doing so about the difficulties you put me through, dying so unexpectedly and leaving so many loose ends behind. According to my calculations, by now you have already seen for yourself how inconvenient an untimely demise is; that is, if you aren't lying in some other chasm, having experienced poetic justice firsthand. As I have yet to receive a notification from the redoubtable Colonel Moran, I rather suspect you're still evading his unwavering aim. Please do not trouble yourself on my behalf. I have tidied up so many things in the short time since you've gone MIA, that had Moran actually boasted of your ascertained death, I'd have charged him for the delay.

As you have probably envisioned in your fitful dreams of a fugitive, everyone who had been informed of your fatal duel with the Napoleon of crime (I suppose I should thank you for not duelling in England and breaking the law again - what happens in Switzerland stays in Switzerland; and for allowing me the mind-rotting pleasure of guessing when would I receive another missive of yours), as the good Doctor insisted you called Pr. Moriarty (have you no taste?), and several individuals who shouldn't have, but somehow got wind that you were to be interred (fancy their disappointment, he, he), have gathered today to say their farewells to your coffin.

Since I know for sure you were not present, but have a general idea of what a funeral looks like, I will not tire you with the describing the bleakness of light, the sharpness of wind, the grieving of your friends, of whom policemen seem to constitute a disturbing amount, and the speech of Doctor Watson, read by his wife since he lost his voice at the very beginning. By the end of the eulogy I could have proposed to her out of pure respect. I don't know how you did it, but she appears to mourn you genially.

There weren't many attendants, Sherlock, only several Scotlandyarders, coughing into their sleeves - I recognised them all from the descriptions in the journals, - and a handful of weirdoes: a man stinking of dog piss brought a mongrel which wailed over the priest's mumbling; a surgeon from St. Bartholomew's hospital kept checking whether his medical bag was where he'd put it - he left immediately upon the service, embracing an unresponsive Dr. Watson; a bevy of (I hope) your former clientesses who dabbed at their eyes so often there was always a hankie in motion; your landlady, standing so straight she would have shamed a Whitehall butler; and a band of street urchins who never blinked. I hardly noticed them at all, they were so quiet.

Truly, then, you weren't as much of a free artist as you'd liked to pretend. Were I in your shoes, I'd feel much honoured by their devotion, besides unbearably sore of feet.

When we gathered for a wake at your place, it was the most disastrous wake to imagine.

The workers who had just finished repairing the damage to your window and bookshelves you had had no time to fix before departing, were waiting for Mrs. Hudson, and at the sight of the brutes she displayed the fearlessness born out of watching your various disguises dance across her threshold; she paid them, warned them about being late for dinner (habit is really a second nature), and ignored the black patches left by their sitting on the stairs.

Having been reminded about the fire in your lodgings, she got upset and irritated that she could not treat us properly.

'Oh, the gentlemen won't mind,' said Mrs. Watson with a sad smile. 'Let me help you; I'm sure we'll fit in even if the sofa is ruined.'

'But the soot!' Mrs. Hudson worried. 'No, Mary; you wait downstairs, I'll check the room myself. You shouldn't breath that.'

Mrs. Watson acquiesced, though I somehow thought that weeks of unrestricted air circulation wouldn't have left a trace of the smoke. Unless you had been experimenting, in which case blaming it all on a super-secret criminal organisation and disappearing off the face of the earth had been a stroke of genius on your part.

Then I saw how she seemed to never get warm even near the stove, and how her cheeks were so daintily rosy against the paleness of her face.

I understood at last the too-old despair in Dr Watson's eyes. You must have known it before you went to the Continent; surely he told you, or you saw it for yourself that night I posed for your personal cabman? She is ill, gravely. If only I had a heart, I'd find you and kill you with my bare hands.

I admit to being amused by your landlady's laudations to your noble self. Did you know you'd been the most sentimental person she ever knew? And that a perfectly logical conclusion she drew from the heaps of keepsakes, mementoes and trophies she regularly uncovered! Don't underestimate women, they have the eyes of a fox and similar brain-processes.

Then the rat-faced one, Lestrade, has waxed melancholy after two cups of tea, not even a drop of spirit in it, and sighed a gust of his miasma in my direction. I have to give him credit for accuracy, if not for discretion. A pall hung over the table, and MacSomething - the Doctor calls him "Mr. Mac", they being two Scots among us Southerners, though despite the Inspector doesn't protest it I doubt he likes such familiarity, judging by the pained rictus he wears when so addressed - muttered that "Mr. Holmes should have drown the scoundrel and climbed out". To my right sat that rotund little fellow who so loves his Surrey that I have yet to bribe him out of the Police Force; he replied that "poor man hadna gills for it."

And so, Sherlock, you hadn't.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: I don't think there'd be a coffin in this case, but I'd like to think he was mourned in some way.

But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine.

---- G. K. Chesterton.

"Your Honour? Could I have me some water?"

Drinks, splashes the remainder on a kerchief and wets his face.

"Much better. Now, please forgive me if anything ain't to yer liking, me an escaped convict and all. I said I don't care what you'd find me, and Mr. Holmes here beat me fair and square - and the Inspector, 'course, meant no disrespect, Sir - so I'll just tell you what I have to tell, and we'll see how it goes from there.

"I know my options, three times o'er, and I'd hang before I go to hard labour. Faster, that way. Cleaner, too."

Smirks.

"You think me drunk? You should see me drunk. It's just that I don't care anymore."

Waves a hand at his lawyer.

"Sit, you pen-pusher. One thing left. I heard how they talk 'bout Tonga here. Call him unchristian. The fools have no christian bladder amon' them! Pardon, ladies. And he had _toes_. Not claws, not hoofs; toes. Right, Inspector? No _horns_, either. And wasn't no cannibal, or he hadn't been the last few years. I guess... I guess I shouldn't've taken him on the tour. Better die where you come from. _I_'d know. His was a hunters' tribe. Should've built him a cairn, or burned to ash. Properly, like.

"That'd be all. Your Honour."

Bows.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: I wanted to write something about Moriarty, but the rest of them demanded to be included, too.

Warning: multiple cross-overs, some quotes.

_Arthur was tired and dearly hoped to rest._

_During his days, he listened to stories. Almost everyone seemed to be hell-bent on telling him about some curious incident or another. During his nights, he saw dreams; so insistent and vivid he feared some devilry was trying to rob him of his mind._

_No ghosts need apply, he muttered unhappily, and closed his eyes._

'Government?' chorused the Kings.

Mycroft Holmes sighed. He never liked repeating himself; doing so many times over was demeaning. He stole a glance at the table. Barring company - though in the course of his career he'd grown used to insanity in worse forms than what'd evolved here, - the eternal five o'clock was actually an appealing prospect.

'Yes, government. It worked out pretty well, too. Negotiations...'

The Hatter took over the presiding. Chaos ensued. Work followed.

'Fool!' Spat the red-bearded stranger, glaring at cousin Bénédict and thrusting his meaty hands under cousin's very nose. 'You crave your peers' recognition, yet your ignorance will only serve to your own bitter disappointment.'

Bénédict blinked.

'There is but one continent where the tsetse fly is found. We're in Africa!'

Bénédict bleated out an incredulous 'But the ostriches...'

The stranger growled deep in his throat. Bénédict nodded. No ostriches. He could live with that.

The raving intellectual made a visible effort to collect himself. However, some horrible suspicion glinted in his eyes, and he once again rounded on the poor entomologist.

'And if you so much as suppose there are elephants in South America...'

'Twins.' The Duke echoed feebly. Two heads bobbed up and down, eyes downcast.

'I'm Helen Stoner, Sir.'

'And I'm Julia Stoner.'

'And both females,' he surmised. Two pairs of cheeks blushed in sync.

He imagined Olivia's face. It was going to be priceless.

'Fair maidens, I welcome you in the fair land of Illyria.'

The boy was gazing up at him, hurting and hopeful and hungry; and despite his lifelong loathing of romantic drivel, Sherlock Holmes found himself unable to leave the miserable mite without a kind word.

After all, he hadn't suffered any loss to the boy's clumsiness; and he was familiar with similar cases; and well he knew the usual end awaiting those who could not adapt - they died out.

'Oliver,' he began mildly, but his intentions stuck in his throat. Revenge would be so sweet...

'Yes?' asked the child.

'Oliver, dear, quit while you still can.'

There was a promise of tears in those young trusting eyes.

'Oliver, you're the worst pick-pocket in England!'

Inspector G. Lestrade was a generous man. An open-minded one. Very open-minded, to converse with someone he could not see, and not of the divine nature.

'Monday, sixteenth?'

'Home,' was the predictable glum reply.

'Witnesses?' Oh yes, he loved his job.

There was a groan; a breath hitched; a fist thumped.

'No witnesses. What am I supposed to have done, anyways?'

'You robbed an old lady. Then - arson, indecent conduct - no, that would not stick... Cooperate, and we'll find you nice mitigating circumstances.'

The Invisible Man gritted his invisible teeth, and wished the anachronism away.

Professor listened to the litany of nothings the nobody before him spouted out, and looked at the line of real customers behind him. Terrorists. Rapists. Bank clerks. All his to command.

The promotion left nothing to be desired, except that sometimes he had to sort out such misunderstandings as this one.

He smiled thinly.

'Mr. Tomlinson, do not fear, you shall be admitted in. Later. In the meanwhile, I'll ask you to run a couple errands...'

_He awoke with a gasp. It was morning, and judging by the steady stream of light, the hour was already late. He was scheduled clinic duty in the afternoon, but right now he was going to lunch with an old co-worker of his._

_Dr. John Watson._

_He's just come back from the war._


End file.
